


almost heaven, west virginia

by neville



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bike Rides, Bruce Banner Feels, Demons, Diners, Family Issues, Ghosts, Horror, Implied Transphobia, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, M/M, Panic Attacks, Paranoia, Psychological Horror, Small Towns, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, Trans Bruce Banner, this is a weird ass fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-19 13:50:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22711819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neville/pseuds/neville
Summary: Bruce Banner returns to his hometown for his grandma's funeral; only, things aren't quite as they seem...
Relationships: Bruce Banner/Thor
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33
Collections: Marvel Rare Pair Bang 2019





	almost heaven, west virginia

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sirsable](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sirsable/gifts).



> who lets me write things? honestly, who??? 
> 
> disclaimer: this is not set in west virginia, i KNOW that, but also this was my google docs title the entire time i wrote it and then i just ... couldn't think of any other title. it just seemed to be the RIGHT title. thank u john denver
> 
> all other non-american disclaimers apply: i'm british, i'm sorry, i don't know american things, please suspend your disbelief
> 
> in case u missed the tags, tws apply for transphobia, a previous suicide attempt, and panic attacks; it also gets a bit gory at one point
> 
> this is basically just a big ass love letter to horror movies, so the plot is p much an adapted version of "hereditary", there are streets named after streets from "it", bruce hears a line from "the silence of the lambs" while he's freaking out, and i also quote "the vvitch" in cheesy nerd fashion
> 
> this was written for the marvel rare pair big bang 2019 and thank u so much to sable for being my artist and sticking with this frankly bizARRE premise!

_I won’t take your breath away  
_ _You have nothing to fear because we’re better than fear  
_ _Oh I won’t take your breath away  
_ _So you have me together_

Grimes, _Avi_

Bruce is a student, and he doesn’t own a car: it takes a couple trains and Greyhounds and then a bike rental to get back home to town, and as he pedals through the streets of his hometown, as familiar now as it was when he traced these paths each day, he turns his music up to full volume until the all-encompassing sound of The War on Drugs mutes anything else this town could have to throw at him. 

He remembers every corner of this place, and sometimes wishes he didn’t. 

He stops a couple streets ahead of his destination; he’s not sure he can actually face swinging onto the left turn at the junction ahead, and seeing that house again, not yet. So he drops his bike onto the grass outside of the Sunny Side Up, stashes his headphones away in his backpack, and pushes the doors open with an intake of breath. It still looks the same, of course, because it’s really only been three years since he left: it’s a little neater, maybe, the table surfaces more polished. There are new menus so it takes him longer to find what he’s looking for; and someone’s sitting in what used to be his usual spot, so he makes do with a booth by the front door instead. He doesn’t recognise any of the waitstaff. 

Bruce certainly doesn’t recognise the waiter who actually comes to serve him: he’s tall, with long blond hair kept up in a bun that isn’t entirely neat, and his name tag reads _hi, I’m THOR :)_ , with the smiley face drawn in pen. When he speaks to ask Bruce if he knows what he wants, he has an accent that _definitely_ isn’t from around here; it’s almost English-sounding. Bruce scratches at the back of his neck. 

“Uh, yeah,” he says. “I’ll have a coffee and the savoury French toast stack, thanks.” 

When Thor brings the French toast, Bruce stops him, tripping over his words for a moment before finally managing to ask Thor if he’s from around here. Bruce knows the answer to that, but it feels more polite than trying to pester Thor with some variation on _where are you from, originally_? 

Thor chuckles. “No, I only moved here for college.” College is about an hour out of town, but Bruce imagines it’s probably easier to find a house here than it is there, if you don’t mind a commute. Bruce himself just had to get _out_ , as far away as he could; he’d been considering England, maybe Scotland, too, before settling on Massachusetts. He’s not sure he could’ve dealt with the climate differences in England. Scotland just sounded _miserable_. “My family is originally from Norway.” 

“So what the hell brought you to _Virginia_?” 

Thor shrugs. “A change of scenery.” He sets down Bruce’s cutlery, too. “How about you? I haven’t seen you around before.”

“Oh, yeah. I’m from here but I’m at college in Massachusetts; I’m just visiting because, uh.” There’s a lump in his throat, and he does his best to swallow it down before he continues. “My meemaw just died, so I’m town for the funeral.” 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Thor says, and he sounds surprisingly… _earnest_. Like he genuinely is sorry for Bruce’s loss, even though they’ve never met before. “What are you studying?” 

“I’m doing my bachelor’s in physics, but I’m hoping to specialise afterwards. I’d like to do a Masters in theoretical physics.” 

“That sounds very smart,” Thor chuckles. “Worth going to Massachusetts for.” Someone hits the bell at the front table, and he pulls a face; a quick _I’m sorry_ and _I hope you enjoy your meal_ and he’s disappeared across the counter. Bruce sighs. Thor is probably the only decent person in town, now that Bruce’s meemaw is gone, and yet - it feels like Bruce isn’t going to even be able to talk to him. He tucks into his pancake stack. 

Okay, the rest of the town may be shit, but since he was five, the pancake stack here has been _exquisite_. 

Five minutes later, out of the blue, Bruce feels a presence by his side: it’s Thor, smiling, who sets a vanilla milkshake on the table. “On the house,” he says. “Welcome back.” 

Bruce finds himself suddenly speechless; he chokes up a little, actually, because in his mind he associates this town with nothing but pain and sadness and suffering, and he had expected little more than that from his visit: but here is Thor, who has known him for five minutes, offering the kindness that Bruce has needed from this place his whole life. The same kindness that his meemaw had, the smile on her face when he visited her on a Saturday morning. “Thank you,” he says. “So much. You don’t know–” He cuts off, his voice wobbling, and shakes his head, unable to finish. 

“Oh, hey, it’s alright,” Thor says, abuzz with concern; he grabs Bruce a few extra napkins to use as tissues, and sits opposite him until his tears dry up. “I’m so sorry, I have to get back on shift now. But just call me over if you need anything.”

He reaches over and squeezes Bruce’s hand, then hurries off to deal with the other customer. 

Bruce’s skin tingles.

He finishes his French toast and his milkshake, hails Thor for the bill, and considers leaving his phone number on the receipt; but, he can’t shake the feeling that that’s stupid, and that he’s only going to be here for a week, so he leaves a generous tip and slips out of the back door.

Okay. He takes a deep breath. Even if he isn’t ready, he has to be. 

  
  


His meemaw’s house is one of those beautiful looming American Gothic properties, the kind that he imagines when he reads pulp horror novels or old English horror. They knew how to write, he thinks, even though he doesn’t get much time to read anymore. It’s on the end of a street not far from the Sunny Side Up, and about a ten minute bike ride from his parents’ house: _that_ , he definitely isn’t ready for yet. 

As a kid here, it was always fine just to drop your bike and leave it wherever: but it feels weird now to just ditch his bike on the immaculately-kept front lawn, so he props it up against the side of the house. There’s a fence that pens the backyard behind the house, but the only way into the yard is through the back door, so he thinks this might be easier. 

He has keys to the house. They’ve been on his keyring since he was thirteen and deemed responsible enough for his own, and he could let himself in at any time, but he sits on the porch first. He used to sit here and read in the summer, when he was a kid, and his meemaw would make cookies or lemonade and ask him about his book, and Bruce would explain it to her. She always listened, even when he got older and moved from kids’ books to pulp novels to science books; and she would interject, every now and then, and ask the questions that his own parents would never bother with. 

He wipes his eyes with his sleeve. 

When the tears have finally stopped and his breathing has changed from ragged to normal, he opens the front door and steps into the empty corridor. It isn’t _physically_ empty: there’s still all the furniture, the coat stand with her elegant longline duffels, but it feels _spiritually_ empty. Usually, there would be a record playing, and the sound of his meemaw shouting a _hello_ : but there’s nobody here, just a deafening silence in the corridor. The creaking of the floorboards beneath his feet suddenly sound unbearably loud. This is the house where his happiness used to live, and now suddenly it feels vacant. 

He goes to the living room, and leafs through his meemaw’s record collection: he finds that Thurston Harris one that he likes, and carefully sets the needle on it, listening to the scrape as the music comes to life. It makes the room feel a little more alive, if he stretches to think that way. 

The kitchen is still fully-stocked: every cupboard is packed from top to toe with essentials from dry pasta to longlife milk to flour, sugar, and chocolate chips. There’s food colouring from when she used to make cakes and run rainbows through the buttercream, and it feels a little as if she could just come in through the door and say hello to him: but his gut knows she won’t. 

His gut spies the recipe books by the bread bin, and decides that he’s going to bake. Bruce has never been good at baking, something he’s always found funny, since baking is supposed to be more akin to science than cooking. He’s just not great at telling when things are ready, or overdone, and forgets to take things out of the oven if nobody reminds him. Despite it all, though, he loves baking: he stopped doing it when he got older, but when he was five or six and still full of fun, it was how he fell in love with his meemaw’s house. 

So, he flips through her beautiful handwritten cake recipe book, and decides on an easy vanilla cupcake recipe. He can do that. 

He keeps catching himself every now and then looking to the side, ready to ask her if he’s finished: if he’s creamed the butter and sugar together properly, or if the mix is ready, or for some help putting the cake batter into the little cupcake cases; at her absence, his heart aches, but he persists, using some semblance of his own judgement. He’s made these plenty of times before, of course, and he’s made fairy cakes with his meemaw, too, with the little wings. 

When he puts them in the oven, he sets the record to its next side. 

The summer sunlight filters through the house’s wide windows, and he sits and basks in the warmth, and wishes that he was here for anything but this. From the corner of his eye, he can see what might be dust, or maybe a floater: an orb on the edges of his vision, shining bright. Then the timer goes off.

  
  


Bruce may have a key for his meemaw’s house, but he doesn’t even have one for his own house; he has to ring the doorbell, and shifts from foot to foot, wondering if he should’ve booked a room in a nearby townhouse. There’s no way that this wasn’t a mistake, and just as he thinks he should maybe book it and figure something else out, his father opens the door. 

Bruce Banner always loved his mother. His family may be patriarchal but in the matriarchs there was power in their kindness: his mom would do anything for him, and she did, and he cried for weeks when she was buried in the ground; and he cried more when the police investigation didn’t materialise. On his first night out in college, he had laid on the grass of the quad, feeling the freedom: he had looked up at the stars, and reached out, and hoped his mother was there. 

But he’s always hated his dad. 

It’s his dad, of course, who opens the door. Not his new girlfriend (or is she a wife? Bruce doesn’t know; even if they’d married, he wouldn’t have attended the wedding anyway), thank God, because Bruce doesn’t even know what he’d say to her, but his dad, with his round glasses and the angry lines that seem permanently etched on his face. 

“We agreed,” Bruce says, swallowing. “You call me Bruce or I leave.” 

(He doesn’t think he could survive not going to his meemaw’s funeral, but there had to be some kind of reckoning, and it had taken all his bravery to say it in the first place.)

“Bruce,” his father says, holding out his hand. Bruce shakes it, tentatively; he doesn’t think he’s ever heard his dad actually use his name: _his_ name. “Good to see you.” It isn’t, but Bruce nods, pressing past his dad; he says a brief hello to the wife or girlfriend, and curtly heads upstairs, back to his childhood bedroom. It’s surprisingly untouched, though he had expected it to have become storage, and covered in a few thick layers of dust. His bed is still made badly. He’s never gotten better at that. 

When he lies down, he sleeps for hours. He’s up for dinner, and then he reads some of his old science tomes, and sleeps again. 

He opts to ignore his dad the next day: just because they’re under the same roof doesn’t mean that Bruce is in any way okay with his father, or that he’ll ever be. He unchains his bike from the garden fence and rides over to the Sunny Side Up again, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he wants to see Thor - a surprising friendly face in this shithole town - or if it’s just because the food is so comforting. Maybe it’s both, he reckons. In his bag, he has the cupcakes from yesterday, a few of which he’s eaten himself. They’re not that bad, actually, for him. 

Thor is still there, with his gorgeous blond ponytail and those escaping strands of hair that frame his face, and he beams as Bruce comes through the door. “Hello,” he says, and, almost breathless just with the shock of it, Bruce says “hi”. 

He takes the same seat at last time, which he’s now decided is his _new seat_ , and orders some pancakes. Thor brings him a milkshake for free, again, and when he does, Bruce stops him and holds out a tupperware box of vanilla buttercream cupcakes. “These are for you,” he says. Okay, God, he’s terrible at flirting and probably shouldn’t even be flirting during a stopover, but… He had a feeling when he was making them that they were for Thor. Because Thor is something that he thought he wouldn’t have any more: safety in an unsafe town. 

“Wow,” Thor says, and sounds genuinely impressed; and thankful. “Thank you so much. These look wonderful.” He sits down again, casting a wary eye back at the kitchen: but nobody seems to have noticed his absence, yet, and so he has some time, still. “How are you doing?”

“It was hard being back in her house,” Bruce says. “And mine.” 

“Yeah.” Thor nods, and slides his hand across the table, clasping Bruce’s. It’s strange, how welcoming Thor is with intimacy: even at college, people aren’t like this. It takes calamity for hugs, but Thor doesn’t seem afraid to touch him. They touch skin to skin and it’s the easiest comfort in the world. “What are you doing today? Will you be back?”

“Yeah, I’m helping to clear out her house,” Bruce says. “I’m going through her stuff and deciding what to donate or what to keep for the family. I don’t really know if I can do it.” 

Thor nods. “You don’t have to,” he says. “There are other people in the family, aren’t there?”

“I said I would do it, so I feel like I have to,” Bruce mumbles. It’s not that he feels like he _has to_ , per se: he’s just sure that he doesn’t have the confidence to ask anyone else. It’s also a way out of socialisation, a way to be quiet and on his own. 

“Right,” Thor says. He’s surprisingly patient: at college, if Bruce said something like this, Tony would be snipping at him about how he doesn’t really _have_ to do it: but Thor is listening, and understands that Bruce really does feel that he has to. It isn’t about ways out: it’s about ways _in_. “You should take breaks, though, if you need them. And I can get you a coffee to take away if that’ll help; maybe a hot cocoa, I’m very good at those, actually.”

Bruce chuckles. “It’s summer,” he says. 

“Every time of the year is hot cocoa time of year.” 

“I guess.” Bruce smiles, because he can’t help it, and Thor grins back before excusing himself to get behind the formica counter before he gets in trouble. He continues eating, and watching the occasional murmur of traffic pass by: kids on bikes, cars, even a motorbike. He recognises a couple of the other diner patrons from church services as a kid, but if any of them recognise him, they don’t try and speak to him. He supposes that, if they _do_ recognise him, he’s a pariah and they probably don’t want to speak to him. Which suits him just fine. 

The milkshakes here are _good_. Seriously good. 

As Bruce is fumbling in his pockets for a tip, he realises that he can see somebody in the distance: they’re standing across the other side of the road, and he’d have had no reason to notice them save for the fact that they seem to be staring right at him. He might be wrong, but he feels as if their eyes are pinned right on him; their mouth starts to stretch into a grin, and he slaps down a five dollar bill on the table before heading for the bathroom. He washes his hands, and then again, winding his fingers and scrubbing at the backs of his hands until he starts to feel calmer, and stupid for having worried about anything at all. He has an anxious predisposition: there are some days where he’s convinced that everybody on campus is staring at him, and he’ll wonder endlessly if his fly is undone or if he has food on his chin and worry about it until he finds Tony. 

Tony calms him down. 

“Can I use your phone?” he asks Thor when he finally emerges; Thor nods, and lets him behind the counter, asking him briefly if he’s okay. Bruce nods. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Just calling a friend.”

Tony’s number is inscribed somewhere on Bruce’s heart, and he keys it into the landline, waiting with baited breath as it rings. He’s not sure where Tony is, actually, if he’s meant to be at a lecture or if he’s gone out somewhere for lunch; he’s not sure what time it is, even, because he rolled straight out of bed and came over here, but apparently he’s struck at the right time, because Tony picks up relatively quickly. “Yello,” he says. 

“Tony?” 

“Brucie! I thought you’d been murdered.” 

“Ha ha.” Bruce leans against the wall. “I just, uh, needed to talk to you.”

“Is that _specifically_ me, or did you just need to hear the voice of anyone not a part of your gross family?”

Bruce manages a little laugh. “Specifically you. This place just makes me so… unsettled, I guess? I feel like someone is going to jump out and confront me, and that doesn’t even feel like an unrealistic idea.” 

“It’s just a couple of days, alright? You are a _brave_ man for even going. This is about you, and your grandma: fuck your family, and fuck what they think. This is your time to celebrate your grandma. And it’s gonna be hard, but think about it: soon enough you’ll be back here and ready to rock and roll. You can do this.”

Tony has never been one for pep talks, or traditionally very good at them, but they’ve always helped Bruce in the past, and he nods, even if Tony can’t see it. “Thanks, T-Bone.” 

“You are _welcome_ , Brucie bear. Come back early if you need to, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Bruce says. “I think I can do this.” 

“Fuck yeah you can. Go break some eggs.” 

When Bruce hangs up the phone, he realises that Thor is behind him; and as he shifts to move out of the way, Thor taps him lightly on the shoulder and hands him a takeaway cup. “Here,” he says with a sly but relentlessly cheery smile. “Don’t tell anyone I let you have this.” 

“Are you sure this is okay?” Bruce asks. 

“Of course it is,” Thor says. 

Bruce walks with his bike, sipping as he walks: he’s taking a little bit of a detour first, just because, even as much as he’s always hated this place, there are parts of it still close to his heart, and one of those parts is the record shop. He and his meemaw used to go every few months together and rake through the bargain bins, looking for the record sleeves that appealed to them most: then they’d spin them at home and the records would be everything from raucously danceable to nobody’s cup of tea, and some would become part of their lives and others long forgotten. When he got older, he would come on his own and buy what he heard on the radio: the sound of music would drown out the thoughts that swirled round his head like a bleak mist; and before then, drown out the arguments of the house. He’d always felt free in the shop, though, with his own money and making his own decisions. Good records, bad records – the mistakes were his, and this his space to make them. 

It’s still open, and manned by the same disaffected-looking fiftysomething man Bruce remembers; he looks up from his comic as the bell above the door rings, and then back down. Bruce takes that as an invitation, and immediately heads for the bargain bin, pawing through a selection of old oddities and sleeves too beaten-up to be sold at full price. He remembers this room and his body remembers its offering of calmness, of quietness - metaphorically, of course, because the speakers are blaring Eddie Cochran. 

He palms through all the records, everything from hip-hop to chart-toppers to alternative rock; he leaves with two New Order LPs, and somehow without being chastised for his drink, which he downs by the door and drops in the bin. He stashes the record away in his bag, and then bikes for a while: he trails around town, passing the houses of people he used to know, and then he goes back to his meemaw’s. 

He puts one of the New Order records on - he loves the sleeve, a psychedelic purple - and starts to deconstruct what used to be his only stable home. Before college: before Tony and Steve and Tasha and all the other friends who love him without conditions. He wishes they could be here with him right now. 

The first point of call, for him, is his meemaw’s bedroom: it’s always felt a little foggy to him, in the sense that she always had the curtains drawn; walking from the bright corridors and into her bedroom was something like visual whiplash, whenever he had the rare reason to be there at all. Opening them now would seem sacrilegious; so he doesn’t, just flips the light switch. 

He clears out her wardrobe first. Anything too moth-addled or sewed up a few too many times, he puts in one pile; another anything good enough for the thrift shop; and, in a final pile, he takes a few things for friends and himself. His grandma’s beige overcoat, which fits his slight frame. There’s a black shirt that would look good on Nat, and he takes some earrings for her, too. If she doesn’t like them, her friends might. Wanda - Bruce sees her in neuroscience, sometimes, when he’s wandering over to the cafeteria for a coffee; Sharon; Hope. Is it weird to keep these things for them? He thinks it’d be weirder to waste her things. 

At the back of her wardrobe, there are her kaftans: they’re floral, and elegant, and beautiful, and Bruce thinks about it for a moment before shrugging one over his shoulders. It’s comfortable, and smells of her perfume and detergent; it makes him feel as if she’s standing next to him. 

The part of him that’s from this stupid backwater town calls him names for wearing her clothes; and the part of him that’s _him_ says it’s the most normal thing in the world. 

He sorts all the other things in her room much the same way – scrap, take to the Goodwill, keep for himself or somebody else. On her bedside table, he finds a book of poetry, and flips through it aimlessly; he’s never read any poetry before that wasn’t for class, mostly because he struggles to understand it. 

> _But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me_
> 
> _Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan_
> 
> _With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,_
> 
> _O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?_

There’s not a word of it he understands, but he reads the stanza over and over again until the words seen to sear into his mind: _not, I’ll not, carrion comfort_. It reminds him a little of a passage from the Bible, some story where Jacob was wrestling with God that he used to think about a lot whilst sitting in the back pew on a Friday afternoon as he wrestled with God in another sense entirely, asking God without answer what to do. He doesn’t think he could go back to that church, now. 

From somewhere else in the house, he hears a sudden clatter: the book drops from his hands and kicks up a small storm of dust from the floorboards at his feet as he recoils in sudden fear. The instinct is immediately to make himself small, to hide. 

He tells himself to be brave, picks the book up from the floor, holds it like a weapon: he creeps, each groan of the floorboards suddenly the loudest noise he’s ever heard as he heads for the kitchen. 

His record scratches and stops.

He _really_ hopes that that was just the last song. 

The kitchen door is still wedged open with the draught excluder, like he had left it: and he rounds the corner so slowly it feels as if he’s barely moving at all, but when he finally does edge into the kitchen, there’s nobody there - but one of the cupboards has been opened and its contents have spilled out, bowls on the floor and plates on the counter. He’s pretty sure he hadn’t left anything teetering on the edge, but he tells himself that he must’ve over and over as he piles them back up and places them away. The idea that anyone might’ve been in the house is too much for him; he really, really can’t deal with that. 

His heart is still pounding even once everything is tidied away, and he takes a seat at the table, sipping water. It sounds so loud, so uncontrollable, a rapturous _bang bang bang bang_ against the chamber of his ribs. What if it never stops, he thinks, and my heart beats and beats until I can’t keep up anymore and I die?

He finds a number in the phone book, an absolute tome split at the spine with use, and dials it. 

“This is the Sunny Side Up Diner,” a voice says. 

“Can I,” Bruce says, surprised by how breathless he sounds, “speak to, uh, Thor, please?”

There’s a moment, and then the shuffle of the phone changing hands, and Thor’s voice, warm and accented and rich. “Hello?” 

“Hi,” Bruce says, and feels his heart speed up even more - he didn’t know that was possible, oh Lord, he thinks his chest might swallow up the rest of his body. “This is Bruce. Hey, listen, do you - do you have a car?” 

“Sure. Why?” 

“Can you take me to the hospital?” 

“Right now?”

“Yeah.” 

“Where are you?” 

“My meemaw’s house. It’s the big one on Jackson. I’ll sit on the porch.” 

“Okay. I’ll be ten minutes. Will you be okay?” 

“Uh-huh.” 

Thor is fast; astonishingly fast, actually, considering that Bruce knows and feels bad about the fact that he’s just had to clock out and drive over. His car is small, and red, and battered; he gets out of it, helping Bruce up from the grass of the front porch as he sobs uncontrollably. His breathing is going now, too, robbed by the terror: he cries over and over into Thor’s shoulder that he doesn’t want to die and that he’s scared, and Thor buckles him in to the passenger side before slamming the accelerator and starting the path out to the hospital. This isn’t the first time Bruce has been; but he hopes that it’ll be the last time here in Virginia, please, please… 

His eyes are raw with tears by the time he arrives at the emergency room: Thor tells him that it’s going to be okay, and Bruce says again that he doesn’t want to die. A nurse holds his hand and makes him breathe in slow rhythms for what feels like forever until the pounding of his heart slows out to a gentle thump. He almost cries more just for the embarrassment of the comedown. 

“It’s okay,” the nurse tells him. She’s young, too, not a part of the Virginian old guard. “We’d rather you came and it be a false alarm than you not coming in for anything serious.” 

They do tests anyway, just to make sure: they all come back inconclusive. The doctors make him take the kaftan off, and his binder: his hands shake and someone has to help him pull it over his head. Thor takes care of them until the tests are over, and organises the hospital billing so that Bruce doesn’t have to. 

It’s late and dark when they finally get back to the car. Bruce runs a hand through his hair. 

“I’m sorry,” he says quietly. 

“Don’t be,” Thor says, and hugs him, and they stand like that for a long time in the parking lot, folded together in a moment where Bruce feels the warmest he has in a long time; and almost, _almost_ safe. Thor rubs the small of his back. “Do you want to get some food first or go straight home?” 

“I’m starving,” Bruce says. 

Thor passes him back his clothes, and Bruce leaves them folded in the back seat, not sure he’s ready to wear either his binder or kaftan again yet. He leans against the window of the car as Thor drives. 

“Why did you come and get me?” Bruce asks. 

“You asked me to come,” Thor says. 

“Yeah, I mean – I mean everything, Thor, why are you doing all of this for me?”

“Because I like you,” Thor says, and Bruce senses that Thor doesn’t want to talk about it just as much as he doesn’t want to talk about what’s just happened: so he turns on the radio. Every now and then he catches himself fixating on the drumbeat of his heart and he gets so worried that he thinks they might need to turn around – on the second occasion, even though he doesn’t say anything, Thor takes his hand for a moment. “Hey,” he says. “Still okay?” Bruce nods. 

They stop at a Waffle House just on the outskirts of town, and as Bruce gulps down a glass of water, Thor tells him how excited he was to go to a Waffle House for the first time when he arrived in America – how exciting _every_ store was: Wendy’s, Target, Walmart, iHop. He sits next to Bruce instead of opposite him, and the more he talks, the more Bruce listens, disappears inside the sound of his voice and his stories about coming to America. 

Bruce eats more waffles than he should, really, slathered with enough toppings to make a five-year-old jealous: Thor near-matches his appetite, and for ten minutes it’s just silence as they work through their food, one forkful at a time. Bruce is so full when he finishes that he thinks he’s going to need carried home, but – God, he was hungry, and he needed it, and he can feel the buzz of serotonin humming around his head now that he’s full and packed with sugar. It’s not a _lot_ – he just feels a little calmer, less likely to drop dead on the floor of the Waffle House, more likely to survive the next few days until he gets to catch the train back over to Massachusetts. (It probably won’t be a train, but his mental faculties aren’t ready for semantics again yet.) 

Thor also makes his way through two cups of coffee, and when he excuses himself to go to the bathroom, pays for the both of them. 

“I was going to pay,” Bruce says, but he’s so tired that the objection comes out half-hearted. Thor doesn’t seem to mind anyway. 

“You can tip.” 

Bruce doesn’t have his jacket with him, still hung up on the coat rack back in his meemaw’s house, and the only bill he has in his trouser pocket is ten dollars, which he leaves on the table. 

They stop again before town so that Thor can fill up on gas, and it’s only when he gets back into the driver’s side seat that he asks where Bruce is going. “You can stay with me,” he says. “If you want. I don’t have much room, but–”

“Just take me home,” Bruce says. “My dad is paying the medical bills, so I owe it to him to not go missing. Drop me on Witcham.” 

Thor gets out of the car when they reach Bruce’s house, and hands Bruce his things from the back seat. Bruce looks at him for a long time, words forming and dying on his tongue over and over until he settles on saying “thanks”. Thor hugs him again, a little gentler this time, less like he’s trying to keep Bruce alive and more like… more like it’s just a _hug_ , in a world where everything is fine. At least for now. 

Bruce goes straight upstairs, past his family trying to catch his attention. He puts on a sweater from his bag, and falls asleep almost the moment he crawls into bed. 

  
  


He wakes up in the night, and someone is standing in the corner of his room; Bruce wants to yell, but he can’t move, none of his limbs will cooperate, and all of his screams are strangled in his throat. 

The next time he wakes, it’s his dad standing by the side of his bed: tall, taller than him, in his suit. Bruce says “dad?” and the sound of his voice seems hollow. He wants to cry. 

He wakes up properly at ten, and takes a long shower with the thermostat as high as he can stand it. Almost all of the items in the bathroom are pink and feminine, and so he leaves smelling like a bouquet of flowers and with his hair scented strongly like apples. It wouldn’t be his usual choice. 

He shaves his light wash of stubble, then puts his sweater on over his binder. He wears his just on the touch of too big, because he panics a little every time he squeezes into it, feels the hammering of his heart and the shortness of his breath. The radio in his room is playing _The Secret_. 

When he passes his window, he stops – there’s somebody on the street and he swears they’re looking right at him, up into his first-floor window, staring and grinning. 

_Right_ at him. 

He shuts the curtains, and heads downstairs. 

Nobody mentions the medical bills, which is strange. He has toast, and orange juice, and doesn’t talk about last night; they must just have been bad dreams – this place is definitely upsetting Bruce’s sense of order. When he asks, so that he doesn’t end up in debt to the tune of a couple thousand dollars, his dad says that he’ll pay for it, that’s fine. He asks what Bruce was in for. Bruce says nothing serious – bait, because his dad always has to know, because he said he would never pay for Bruce trying to kill himself again, and Bruce thinks about the fact that it was his meemaw, elderly and regal, who watched him throw up over the side of the white bed and took him home when it had been confirmed no serious damage had taken place, except that he might need to watch his liver in the future. 

She had paid that bill, and Bruce had slept in her guest room for a month, and by the next was leaving for college. 

“There’s something weird going on,” he says to Thor. It’s past lunchtime, and Bruce has resumed on clearing out the house: he’s doing better today, much better, and taking a break for lunch at the diner. “I keep… seeing stuff, and I don’t know if it’s real or if I’m just reading into it somehow. And this morning, my dad agreed to pay my medical bills, no questions asked. I don’t get it.” 

Thor is in the middle of making Bruce’s coffee. He steams the milk, and after it stops screeching, turns around. “What are you seeing?” he asks. 

“I feel like people are watching me. And last night, I woke up and my dad was standing over me, and it felt - weird. I felt really uncomfortable.” 

“For good reason,” Thor says. “That sounds terrifying - he was standing _over your bed_?” 

“Yeah,” Bruce says, watching as Thor finishes making his coffee and pours it out into a mug. Bruce takes it with a little bit of milk, and some sugar. “Right over me.” 

“That’s weird,” Thor concurs, handing Bruce his coffee. “I’m not sure you should be staying there.” 

“I might sleep at my meemaw’s tonight. It’s the funeral, and then the next day I’m leaving.” Bruce pauses for a moment, taps the pads of his fingers against the mug. “Can you come over? I don’t think I can sleep in there on my own.”

To Bruce’s absolute relief, Thor doesn’t make a joke, or look disgusted; he just nods, and says sure, he’ll come over when he gets off work and help out, it’s no problem. Bruce nods, and sets his coffee down on the formica counter, pulling himself up onto the stool; God, he’s pretty sure he’s not _that_ short, but these diner stools are so high he thinks he’s just going to fall off and make a fool of himself in front of Thor, and everybody else, but mostly Thor. He goes red. 

“Eggs, sunny side up,” Thor announces as he places the plate in front of Bruce. Bruce grins. He’s been looking forward to a nice and substantial lunch all day, and eggs are his favourite. Thor even sneaks him a strawberry milkshake this time. 

Bruce is halfway through his eggs when someone from behind taps him on the shoulder; he rotates on the stool, not recognising the sunken eyes of the old woman standing next to him. She’s short, shorter than him, and her grin is yellowish with caffeine stains. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to give this so early, but I just couldn’t wait.” 

She hands him a box – it’s cardboard, but decorated elegantly with a woodlands pattern, and held shut with a frugal amount of tape. He doesn’t know what it is, but she pushes it into his hands and before he can even say thank you and ask what it’s for and if she’s sure she has the right person, she smiles and leaves. 

Bruce doesn’t know what it _is_ about her smile – it felt so genuine it was _eerie_ – but it burns itself into the back of his mind, and he stares at the box. 

Against his better judgement, he opens it. 

Inside the box is a crown: it’s handmade and painted gold, and looks just about the right size for his head, if he had to guess. There’s nothing else in the box. 

When he looks up, the woman is smiling at him through the window of the diner, and he shuts the box, determined to just eat his eggs in peace, and not think about this or about how creepy it all is or about how he’s starting to wonder if this entire _town_ is conspiring against him. But – no, he’s just being paranoid, he’s sure. That’s the way of it. He’s always been that way inclined, really; and he was always more likely, too, to read ghost stories when he went to the local library. He doesn’t miss the irony that he feels so petrified of the possibility of real-life ghosts, but behind the page it feels safe. It’s not real, only a shared figment of his and the author’s imaginations. 

The box is hard to transport around on his bike, so he walks with both of them. The sun glows down from the sky, always too much, breaking through every corner and making it a place without reprieve; Bruce is glad that his time in these streets is coming to an end, again. Bad memories clamour on every corner, and it feels more and more like effort to block them out, to forget the history he shares with this place. Even the air feels oppressive sometimes, outside the shelters of his meemaw’s house and the diner; he longs for university again, for his friends and the campus that he feels safe in. He could fall asleep anywhere there, from the library to the corridors; but here he feels on edge when he sleeps, and he doesn’t know if he’ll get any tonight. 

He pushes those thoughts away as he arrives back in his meemaw’s yard. Clearing her house out is a taxing effort, and someone with a car is going to have to take things out to the dump and to donate. He’s taken a few more of her things for himself: her recipe book, the poetry from her bedside table, a few of the smaller ornaments from her windowsills, including the camel he used to play with all the time as a kid. 

He cries for a while in the living room, remembering her. 

Thor comes over, like he said he would, and helps Bruce out with some of the heavier lifting and with the last few rooms of the house. Bruce hasn’t _properly_ finished, but he’s finished with the important things; Thor even drives the surplus of excess things to the dump and local thrift shops, and for dinner they order pizza. It’s something strangely like normal, sitting in front of the television and sharing food with Thor. He feels as if it’s something they’ve been doing for years and something they’ll continue to do, and as they watch some schlocky action movie on whatever channel it is, Bruce realises that he’s leaning more and more into Thor, their shoulders brushing and hands bumping as they each make for the next slice of pizza. 

It’s… nice. Pleasantly so. 

Bruce would’ve cursed out this whole visit completely if it weren’t for Thor. 

“I never thought I would come back here,” Bruce says. He’s pressed a little more against Thor, now, but mostly because they’re both sprawling out on a sofa that barely fits two. Bruce is not _sprawling_ , per se, just making some room to coddle his full belly. He’s eaten so much that he hurts. “I thought that, if anything ever happened here, I’d just say no. All my friends thought that this was a terrible idea, and so did my therapist, but – I just felt like I had to. I don’t know why.” 

“Has it helped?” Thor asks. 

“I don’t know,” says Bruce. “I feel anxious and freaked out and like I want to go home all the time. But… it doesn’t feel all bad. I didn’t think about my meemaw when I was away, and being back has just reminded me of all the good things here, like her.” He pauses for a moment, and turns his head, and lets the words roll through his mind a few times before he says, “and there’s you.” 

Thor laughs. “I’m just a waiter.”

“Yeah, and the nicest person in town.” 

They watch more of whatever the movie is, and Bruce watches the sky turn orange and then pink and then shades of grey and black. “Someone gave me something earlier,” he says, forcing himself up from the comfort of the couch and walking through to the kitchen. It’s generally warm this time of year, but the kitchen of this house has always been a little cooler. 

Thor follows him. Bruce put the box away in the cupboard by the sink, the one that didn’t have much in it before and is a little blackened with damp, and he takes it out carefully, as if it could burn his fingers. “A lady gave it to me at the diner. I don’t know her.”

“Strange,” says Thor, examining the crown closely: Bruce doesn’t know what he’s looking at, in particular, but the more he looks at the crown the more he feels some pervading sense of _wrongness_ ; like he wants to put it back into the box, and slam the lid, and shove it back under the sink and never look at it again. Another part of him, lingering at the edges of his consciousness, wants to burn it. 

Thor steps forward for a moment, and holds the crown over Bruce’s head; Bruce takes a step back, and says “don’t do that”, and so Thor just puts it away. 

“Do you think something is going on?” Thor asks. 

“I don’t know,” Bruce says, exasperated: with the town, with the weirdness, with himself. He’s just _tired_. 

“I have a brother,” Thor says, out of nowhere, stirring Bruce from his half-sleep. They’re both sleeping in the guest room – Thor on a bundle of blankets on the floor and Bruce in the bed, curled up to his knees. “He always felt slighted by our father, as if he was never loved enough; and so he made choices I didn’t agree with, and that got him in more trouble, over and over and over. Which, of course, just made my father angrier with him. And this kept going on, for years and years, all this stupid bickering, until he did something stupid that got him seriously hurt, and when I went to see him in the hospital he said _this is because of you_ . And I felt guilty, so guilty about everything; was it all my fault? And ever since, I’ve just wanted to be able to _help_ people, to make up for what I did wrong, because I – I didn’t deal with the situation well. I ran away to college here and left my brother behind. And I just want to be _better_.”

“You know it’s not your fault, right? The way your family decides to react.” Bruce scoots closer to the edge of the bed, looks down at Thor, whose blond hair is spread out on the blankets like a halo. “What your brother said – that wasn’t right.”

“I just can’t help feeling as if it _is_ all my fault.” 

“Thor…” 

“That’s why I’m helping you. Or, that’s why I started. Now, I…” 

There’s a long moment of silence between them. Bruce might’ve assumed that Thor was using him for moral redemption, too, but – does it really matter, he thinks, why someone chooses to be kind? Maybe it was wrong to ask the question in the first place and to give into the gnawing feeling in his mind of _what if there’s an ulterior motive_ ; because now, for better or worse, Bruce trusts Thor. A lot. 

“Thanks,” Bruce says. “For helping me. No matter what the reason.” 

He turns around ten minutes later, when he’s sick of the position he’s been lying in, his joints all tired and aching: and he swears, standing at the window, peering in at him, is the face of his meemaw. He doesn’t have the energy to scream, or panic, or think: he just looks at her, and looks until his eyes fall shut and he sinks into sleep. 

“Mom?” 

She’s been standing in the corner of the guest room for ten minutes now, long enough for Bruce to consider the fact that she might not be a trick of the light. She’s beautiful, the way he remembers her from when he was five, her hair a deep brown and her lips the bright red of a lipstick that he used to play with, rotating back and forth into the container and drawing greasy red lines on the backs of his hands. Vibrant. She doesn’t have the look of terror in her eyes from his teenage years; she looks… happy. 

Bruce crawls out from under the covers, his bare feet cold against the floorboards of the corridor as he follows her spectre, hypnotised. The house is dark, with barely even the moonlight to guide him, and more than once he trips over some steps as he walks; he’s barely aware of his own motion, trapped in his thoughts and memories of her and his desperation to reach out and touch her, to feel the softness of her hair and to disappear into the warmth of her arms. She, of course, floats, her movements fluid and effortless and graceful. 

The stairs to the basement groan under the pressure of Bruce’s weight, light as he is; the dark seems to swallow him up as he descends, further and further, until he’s standing in absolute sensory deprivation and all he can see is that vision of his mother. 

“Mom?” he says, and that’s when she starts screaming. 

Bruce stumbles back, and tries to find some words, anything he can say that’ll stop the overwhelming noise; it’s loud, bellowing, and feels as if it’s screaming through his mind and body. It’s too much: all of his anxiety and panic rises to meet it and he feels as if his chest is going to implode with the stimulation–

Jesus, is this how it’s going to end–

Please–

_Have the lambs stopped screaming_ –

Then the light switches on, and Bruce is standing on his own in the basement, his feet cold and his heart pounding. He stares at the empty space in front of him. 

“Bruce,” Thor says, calm in all the ways he’ll never be, “come back and get some sleep.” 

“Okay,” Bruce says, and he realises as he’s walking up the stairs that he’s shaking, uncontrollably hard, his hands trembling. When he gets back into bed, Thor gets in behind him, and Bruce lets himself lie close to him, and feel the warmth; and this time, when he sleeps, it’s dreamless and calm. 

  
  


Thor brings some breakfast over the next morning from the diner; he brings Bruce pancakes with maple syrup, and a coffee, and has eggs and bacon for himself, but they eat parts of each other’s food and Bruce plays the other New Order record he bought that day. It’s the day of the funeral, so he takes his nice shirt and pants out of his backpack and irons them after breakfast while Thor does the dishes. Bruce had said that he didn’t have to, that he’d probably be back tonight and do them then, but Thor had insisted. “You’ll be upset,” he said. 

Bruce showers and then dresses in the guest room. He hasn’t worn formal clothes for years, and barely has any: he took with him a shirt and pressed black trousers, and he has a bow tie, too, that he can’t do himself. As it turns out, Thor knows how to tie them, and does it for him. 

“Is it okay to say that you look good?” he asks, sorting out Bruce’s shirt collar like a mother bird. “I know it’s a sad day, but…” 

“I’ll take the compliment,” Bruce says with a small smile, smoothing down the front of his shirt. “Hey, uh, Thor.” Bruce waits a moment for Thor to register, lifting his head with a _mm?_ “Oh, God, this is gonna sound weird, but - could you come down to the basement with me? I just - I feel like there’s something down there, but I don’t want to freak out again on my own.” He wrings his hands. “Please.” 

“Of course,” Thor says, as if Bruce hasn’t just asked him a very odd question; he’s at the basement door before Bruce even has a chance to register the answer, and Bruce swallows, stepping past Thor and leading him down the stairs. 

If there’s a house this old in the world that doesn’t have stairs that creak, he’d like to find it, and move in. 

Bruce hates basements. He’s hated them ever since he was fifteen and read that book of Edgar Allan Poe stories, and he waits at the bottom of the stairs for Thor to arrive; he thinks about that story for a moment, the one in the basement, the one with the wine, and then he thinks about Thomas Harris and that bottle of chianti and shivers. He leans into Thor. 

“You alright?” he asks. 

“Yeah,” Bruce says nervously, taking a few exploratory steps forward. He doesn’t actually really remember this basement - he’d been too scared of it as a kid, of course, and hadn’t thought about it when he was clearing out the rest of the house. It’s filled mostly with old cardboard boxes, and a couple of shelves of photo albums; nothing in particular, really. He’s not sure what it had been that had made him so sure there was something here - had last night just lodged in his mind? 

He opens one of the photo books, and is immediately faced with the sight of himself in his mother’s arms. He’s just a tiny baby - he came early, actually, and she’s holding him to her chest, smiling down at him in a way that he misses so much. His father has never been like that, has never smiled at him like that; but his mom, God, his mom, he loved her and she loved him and the day he found out she died he had cried himself hoarse. 

“Was that your mum?” Thor asks. 

“Yeah,” Bruce says.

“You look like her.” 

“I miss her.” 

“I’m sorry.” Thor puts an arm around Bruce’s shoulders for a moment. “Do you want me to take these books upstairs?” 

“No,” Bruce whispers. “Don’t leave me down here.” 

Bruce puts the book aside, not sure that he can bear to look at it any more - it’s been years, _years_ since his mother died, but the feeling of the pain, as sharp as a knife, never seems to ebb. He doesn’t often think of her when he’s at college, but now he’s surrounded by his dead matriarchs, the women who held his life together; and they’re gone, and all he has is himself, and the friends who have been helping him shed the misery of his upbringing. And Thor. He doesn’t know how long he’ll have Thor, if it’ll all be over tomorrow when he leaves - but for right now, in this moment, against everything, he has Thor. 

They look through some of the cardboard boxes: mostly, it’s old ornaments, and nothing interesting, but in one of the boxes, there are books. Not fiction books, but old tomes with their names inscribed on the covers, and Bruce pauses. The one on the top is called _The Lesser Key of Solomon_ , and he’s - he knows that name. He’s heard it before, somewhere, on television or in a lecture or maybe one of his friends mentioned it.

He doesn’t remember what it is, but he’s scared to touch it.

It’s Thor who lifts it from the box, and leafs through the pages, and that’s when Bruce remembers what it is: the _Lesser Key of Solomon_ , the book of demons. Who told him about it? Maybe he read it in a horror novel. 

Underneath that book is another: some fusion of scrapbook and journal, and with shaking hands Bruce opens it. There are pictures of his family: his mother, his father, and then him. Him as a child, mostly, but then a picture of him - oh, shit, his blood runs cold, because that’s a picture of him from Massachusetts, his hair wild with curls and his mouth wide with a grin. There’s a cross through the pictures of his mother, and his meemaw, and written in pen above the picture of his father is the simple word: **SACRIFICE**. 

Next to his picture is written the word **PAIMON** , and beneath it is a date: a date that’s scorched into Bruce’s brain, because it was the day of his first testosterone injection. 

He turns the page. 

There’s a picture of Thor, and the word **SACRIFICE** , and Bruce drops the book. 

He knows what he thinks it means. He just doesn’t want to think that it’s _true_. 

It takes Thor a few beats to catch up; he reads a little slower, takes his time, and then when he shuts the scrapbook he sits down on the ground next to Bruce, who is covering his eyes and rocking for a lack of anything else to do. His world feels surreal; everything feels like a bad dream, like a nightmare in a coma, because he _just can’t wake up_. He wants to so desperately, but he can’t: people are watching him through his windows, and he’s haunted by ghosts of unspecified origins, and someone is trying to put a demon inside of him and kill his guardian angel. 

Thor takes his hands. 

“Am I awake?” Bruce asks. 

“Sadly, yes,” says Thor. He touches his forehead to Bruce’s. “Breathe.”

“Thor, I’m freaking out, I can’t-” 

“ _Breathe_ ,” Thor says again, more forcefully. He demonstrates, inhaling loudly and holding, then letting it out: Bruce just listens for a moment, and then follows suit, even when it feels impossible to breathe as deeply. In and out. In and out. The rise and fall of his chest in time with the rise and fall of Thor’s. The feeling of Thor’s skin against his. “Let’s go over what we know.” 

“Okay,” Bruce says. It is not okay, but he has to do it: he knows that he has to swallow his fear, now. This isn’t the time for anything but focus. He can do this. “So, they want to put the spirit of the demon Paimon in me.” 

“Who’s they?” Thor asks. 

“I don’t know,” says Bruce. Thor picks up the scrapbook, and opens it to a page that Bruce hadn’t looked at - there are pictures on the pages, pictures of a group of people sitting around his meemaw. He can see his father, and the woman who gave him the crown in the diner, and it’s almost impossible to resist the urge to put distance between himself and the truth, because he doesn’t want to know it, just wants to fucking _run_. 

In the picture, his meemaw is wearing a crown, not entirely unlike the one he was given. 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bruce says, though he has a feeling that he already knows the answer. 

“Bruce,” Thor says slowly. “I think your grandma - I think she was Paimon.” 

“And demons like to bake now, huh?” 

“And I think that because she’s dead, they’re hoping to pass Paimon into you.” 

Bruce groans, pressing his face into his hands again. It makes sense. It makes so much fucking sense. His dad - well, his dad is _batshit_ , right? His dad killed his mom, and, demon or not, nobody in the family had felt particularly _great_ about it. Skip a generation, and Bruce is the only child; and his grandma had been the only person in town to accept that he was trans, and she had suggested pages full of names for him, and helped him pay for the first couple of months he was on testosterone before his finances had stabilised. They had always gotten along - so of course Bruce was going to come back, _of course_. Paimon had found a host in Bruce. Paimon didn’t care if Bruce wasn’t the rest of the town’s idea of a man. Bruce was man enough for Bruce. 

It’s probably stupid, but Bruce actually feels a pang of affection towards the malevolent spirit for a moment. Maybe it isn’t malevolent. If his grandma was Paimon, then –

He decides that he’s not going to ruminate on it. 

“What do we do?” he asks. He’s going a thousand miles a minute, and can’t stop himself to _think_. Thor takes holds of his arms, and the feeling of someone touching Bruce grounds him so quickly that it’s almost dizzying. He looks at Thor. Thor looks at him. Bruce breathes. “Okay,” he says. “They don’t know that we know, right? So maybe I should go to the funeral, and play along, and then… we run. They’re probably suspicious that we know something because we’ve been staying here, and I know that people are watching me a lot, so – I think we should run when everybody is gathered in one place.” 

“Sounds like a plan,” says Thor, and then, “I’m coming to the funeral with you.”

“But that’s going to put you in danger,” Bruce says, frowning. 

“They could outnumber me and kill me easily at home. If I’m with you, they might have to put it off,” Thor suggests.

“Okay,” Bruce says, because, if he’s honest – it’d just feel so much _safer_ having Thor there. Thor makes him feel like he can be strong, or at least stand his ground. “Listen, I’m really sorry that you might get killed because of me, I–”

“–did nothing,” Thor interrupts gently. 

Bruce nods. 

  
  


“You are not cycling to a funeral,” Thor had said, and driven them. Bruce’s backpack, photo albums included (all of those with his mother, anyhow), is tucked away in the trunk. He taps out an uncertain rhythm on the fabric of his trousers as they drive – the day could go anywhere, and really _anywhere_ , and he doesn’t know how he’s supposed to feel driving towards the great unknown. At least he’s dressed for the occasion. 

The funeral home is on the other side of town, in the sun-dappled part of town: it’s too hot, which is why Bruce had eschewed wearing a blazer, but even then when he gets out of the car, he can feel his skin beginning to grease with sweat. Thor’s car’s AC isn’t great - in fact, the car itself isn’t great and the suspension is starting to go, but Bruce has made entire road trips in worse vehicles, so he isn’t apt to complain. He’s just - _uncomfortable_. 

Most of his family are waiting outside of the home, one of those red-brick buildings that would seem colourful on any other type of establishment. He recognises aunts, uncles, he’s sure those teenagers must be his cousins; he hasn’t seen them all in years, and isn’t sure that he wants to now. All of their eyes seem to be fixated on him. Bruce shifts a little closer to Thor when he walks. His family, the town: how far does this go? Where does it start, where does it end; does it end? 

He meets his dad inside of the home; Thor waits outside, and Bruce feels horribly bare as he walks into the hall. There are rows of seats like pews, Bibles tucked into the back of them; Bruce hasn’t read a Bible in years. The only part of it he remembers is Psalm 23: “ _yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me_ ”. 

He wishes he felt no fear, but it bubbles inside of him. 

The funeral begins normally: Bruce has to shake the hands of people he knows, and doesn’t, as they all tell him that they’re sorry for his loss. The heat in the room seems to rise, and rise; he feels nauseous, and more so by the way that people look at him. It’s some strange reverence, desire, desperation - but not for him. He feels as if he’s being looked through. 

Thor’s hand is the warmest that he shakes. 

Bruce sits in the front row, next to his dad, turning the order of service over and over in his hands. He can’t focus on the words, or the hymns, and it’s taking all of his energy just to keep himself from bouncing his leg. In front of him, a priest is waxing eloquent about the life of his grandmother; Bruce is obsessed with the thought that, for all the time he knew her, maybe she wasn’t his grandmother at all. 

He shifts as his dad gets up. 

“My mother,” he says, his voice carrying across the room; it was always loud, always _too_ loud, “had a mission. She brought this family and this town to glory. It was reborn from the depression like a phoenix from the ashes under her wise guidance, but she knew that she was limited - she was just a woman. And then she ate from the tree of knowledge, and learned; she let the king Paimon into her body, and he has fostered us. But she has passed on and we are now able to correct his body. It is a glorious day. I am proud of my son, the host, for his strength and resilience and in his sacrificial act of returning home; he shalt bless us on this day.” He leans closer to the lectern, grins, his mouth wide and his teeth dark: “tell me, my family, my friends, would you like to live deliciously?” 

Bruce stands up - he doesn’t realise he has until the chair stumbles from beneath him. He’s staring down his father, the source of all misery in his life, and his fists are shaking; he’s so furious that he doesn’t know what’s going to happen, can just feel it burning up through his throat, and when he opens his mouth, he says “I never wanted to be your son”. 

His father laughs. 

“You don’t - you don’t get to have me now. You don’t get to pick and choose when you want me. I never wanted to come back. It wasn’t for you.” 

“And who said,” his father asks, “that _you_ had a choice?” 

And before Bruce can say anything, or think, or feel the reaction in his gut, his father produces a shotgun from behind the coffin, notches it beneath his chin, and pulls the trigger. The blood hits Bruce across the space, stains the front of his shirt and his face, and instinctively he screams. He’s aware, suddenly, that the room has become charged: he’s expecting everybody to be staring at him, but when he half-turns he realises that they’re looking at Thor. 

Thor. The second sacrifice. And, oh, God, he brought himself here. 

Thor bolts for the door - but he isn’t fast enough, because the man from the butcher’s shop Bruce grew up next to and his son, bulky and strong, are blocking the exit. Bruce’s father’s blood is beginning to drip down from the two steps up to the podium and the coffin; Bruce wants to go to the body, to take the shotgun, to scream and threaten and barge out of the doors with Thor - but he’s frozen, rooted to the spot, the tangled vines of his imagination taut around his legs. His eyes are burning with tears. He doesn’t know who they’re for. 

His aunt is pushing a lighter into his hands and guiding him towards the coffin: but even she can’t get him to move. Bruce is quivering. 

He’s seen his fear and panic manifest in so many different ways over the years - but never like this. It feels like his veins are running with fear, and it’s all that he’s made of. He wants to sink into the carpeted floor. 

“Go on,” his aunt is saying, moving his thumb on the lighter to summon the flame. It doesn’t flint the first or second time, and she leaves a bruise when she forces his hand the third time: then she’s pushing him, and so is someone else. His body is frozen, but that doesn’t mean that other people can’t carry him, hauling his skinny body across the threshold and towards the coffin. His feet stop in the puddle of his father’s blood. 

This is how it’s always been: in the shadow of his father. 

He realises he’s crying when he feels the tears start to run down his cheeks. 

Fuck this. Fuck this. 

His hand is brought to the wood of the coffin, and someone presses down on his finger, and before he can feel the fire light, he vacates his body. 

  
  


_The King Paimon doesn’t look like his grandmother at all. He’s beautiful, actually, in a classical way: his features are feminine, and he stands tall upon the back of a camel, long dark hair cascading around his bare shoulders. On his head is a crown better tailored than any human in the town could’ve offered, royal and embedded with heavenly gemstones. Bruce supposes that they can’t be heavenly, but they shine even with a lack of light._

_On either side of him are other demons: both of them are holding trumpets, and as Paimon’s camel walks, they play a proud fanfare; Bruce had expected it to be out of tune, or discordant, but it’s perfect._

_Paimon gazes down at him, and Bruce feels his power._

_“He would die,” Paimon says. His voice comes with a wheeze, hoarse as if he hasn’t spoken for years; it’s the only thing that tips Bruce off to the fact that he isn’t from heaven. Despite the seeming pain in his throat, Paimon speaks levelly, calmly. “What would you do for his life?”_

_“Everything,” Bruce says._

_Paimon laughs; it sounds more like a cough. “Would you let me walk astride with you in your mortal body?” he asks. He seems to sense Bruce’s worries before Bruce lets himself push them away. “I do not mind your form. Humanity is trivial.”_

_“I would,” he says, “if you promise that we share, and that Thor is going to live.”_

_Paimon nods. “If you are willing to accept this compromise, Bruce Banner, than I shall save the life of your companion. When I enter your body, you may have my powers to save him. Do what you will.”_

_“Paimon,” Bruce says, before the illusion fades, “King Paimon - why were you so kind to me?”_

_The demon looks at him; his expression is absolutely unreadable, and then he smiles. “Why, when I’m summoned, my powers may include revealing hidden treasures and clearing up doubts. I do not need to be asked. I can do what I wish. It is much more fun to do what I will, rather than obey the dull needs of your neighbours. You were infinitely more interesting. You are not blinded by hatred, or jealousy, or stupidity. You simply want to learn, and to live; and I, too, want to continue to learn.”_

_“I will spare his life,” Paimon says, and the world returns to Bruce._

  
  


With him come Paimon’s companion kings: in the corner of his mind that is rapidly expanding to accommodate its new consciousness, their names are filled in as Bebal and Abalam, and the knowledge arrives with their names that nobody else in the room can see them. _They are yours to use as you see fit,_ Paimon whispers in his mind. 

Bebal wrenches Bruce’s aunt from him; Bruce drops the lighter, snuffing it out, and turns, ducking beneath the lunging arms of a muscular cousin. He tells Bebal and Abalam to clear his path: and it’s not until the next spatter of blood hits him that he realises they don’t share his sense of morality. But a part of him - a part of him that Paimon seems to be feeding into - doesn’t care. This is what his family would do to Thor; this is what his family drove himself to do. This is the revenge he always wanted, as visceral and painful as the life he had had to lead here. 

Bruce walks down the aisle of the funeral parlour as chaos breaks out among him. Thor stands at the other end, looking at him as if he’s a God. 

(He does not think about the fact that Bebal is decapitating his aunt with her own shoelaces, her throat hot with the burn, or that Abalam has taken the lighter and is blowing fire from his throat that envelops whole bodies at once. Soon, the home will be blackened and charred, and will fall apart; and soon, Bruce will not be in Virginia.)

“We’ve got to go,” he says as he grabs Thor’s arms. “Car, now!”

That’s when Bruce hears the gunshot go off behind him, and feels the rush of air as the bullet passes his ear; he doesn’t know who has the gun, and doesn’t care, just that he knows he needs to run. He needs to run like hell, because this town could still kill him in a thousand different ways, and he’s holding Thor’s hand and belting across the car park. He didn’t even know that he could run like this: the ground doesn’t seem to exist beneath him as he dashes, the sound of gunfire crashing behind him. 

_It’s up to you_ , Paimon laughs. _Can you save him now?_

He’s running, he’s running, and God it feels like the land stretches out before him: the car park is big, and wasn’t that close to the funeral home in the first place, and he feels like he’s running across lava. He burns. Everything burns. 

But he’s got Thor. 

He crashes to a halt and almost trips when they arrive at the car; Thor fumbles to unlock the door, and they almost fall into the seats. Thor hits the accelerator before either of them are buckled in, sending Bruce careening slightly across the dashboard. 

And then, as he settles himself back into the seat and grasps for his seatbelt, he laughs. 

“Holy shit,” he says, and then, “I hate this town.” 

His lungs are still screaming, and he can’t catch his breath against the tightness of his binder: his heart is hammering against his chest, everything hurts, and it feels like it’s being crushed. He rolls down the window and leans out and throws up, the wind roaring through his hair as they speed out of town. 

“Do you want to go to the hospital?” Thor asks, sounding concerned. Bruce laughs again, leaning against the back of his seat, his mouth acrid with vomit. He wipes it with the back of his hand. 

“No,” he says. “Keep driving.” 

Bruce undoes the first few buttons of his shirt and pulls it off; and then, he rolls his binder up and yanks it off over his head, dropping it onto his lap before replacing his shirt. The wind is still whipping in from outside, and - 

He feels _free_. It’s over. It’s all over, and now it’s just him, and Thor, and the road. He doesn’t have to think about the people who are watching him, and the family who hurt him, and the hellish town that he grew up in. He just - he gets to go back to Massachusetts, and to his degree, and to the apartment he shares with his friends. This shitty detour is over. 

Thor reaches over, and takes his hand. On the radio, the first station they pick up is playing _Take Me Home, Country Roads_. 

  
  


When it gets dark, they stop at a gas station; Bruce has to pee, and they both have to eat. Thor buys him an extra-large state T-shirt, and they spend far too long picking out chips and sweets and sandwiches to eat on the road. There are books and magazines, and so Bruce picks up something to read, too. It’s a long way back to his university.

Bruce asks Thor as they get to the counter if he’s driving all the way to Massachusetts, and Thor says yeah, that he hadn’t really been going to his lectures in weeks, anyway. “I’ve been thinking about my brother a lot,” he says. “I was going to go back to Norway and spend some time with him. I suppose I can take a detour.” He grins. “I’ve never been on a road trip before.” 

“They’re fun,” Bruce says. “Not pretty. But fun.” 

He pulls the T-shirt on over his shirt, covering the last of the blood (he had scrubbed at his arms and face in the toilet earlier), and helps Thor carry their stuff back to the car. They have dinner on the hood of the car, sandwiches and Hershey bars and soda, and watch the stars twinkling in the sky above them. Bruce is feeling remarkably good, all things considered, and Thor - well, he hasn’t asked any questions. 

“Thor,” Bruce says. “I’m so glad you’re with me.” 

“I’m glad I met _you_ ,” Thor says. “I’m glad we met each other.” 

“I’m sorry you almost got sacrificed and that my family were planning to possess me.” 

“Oh, no, don’t be. These kinds of things are the spice of life.” 

Bruce doesn’t know what time it is when they finally finish their haphazard dinner, and when they head back to the car; just that it’s late, and he’s tired, and still faintly buzzed with adrenaline. They decide that Thor will sleep in the front, and Bruce in the back, so that they can sprawl out; but Bruce takes Thor’s hand and stops him for a moment, and kisses him there, in the middle of the road. It’s overdue. He doesn’t care. Thor’s lips are slightly chapped and he likes them that way. 

They fall asleep holding hands, and Bruce thinks - for once, he can’t wait for the morning. In the back of his head, Paimon laughs. 


End file.
